How can a beautiful white elephant be a terrible curse?

Run-Run, a young elephant trainer, discovers the answer when he incurs the fury of the prince. The boy's punishment? The gift of an elephant, white as a cloud. From that moment forward, the curse reveals itself. According to tradition, so rare an elephant cannot be allowed to work for its keep. It is poor Run-Run who must feed the beast the hundreds of pounds of food it eats each day, and scrub it clean, and brush its pom-pom of a tail, and wash behind its ears, and, above all, keep it from doing any work.

Oh, if only Run-Run could make the magnificent white elephant disappear! Clever as a magician, he does—but the curse has tricks of its own for Run-Run.

"Fleischman (The Whipping Boy) offers a cleverly themed if sleepy story starring Run-Run, a boy in old Siam. His beloved old elephant, Walking Mountain, diligently works in the fields removing stumps to earn the lad enough money to feed him. One day, after the elephant sprays an ill-tempered prince with water, the royal punishes Run-Run with a 'gift to curse' him: Sahib, an elephant whose white color renders him sacred. The prince's mahout orders Run-Run to treat the animal 'like an honored guest,' and to feed him the finest foods, even though the noble beast is not permitted to work to earn his keep. Following the palace mahout's directives to let Sahib do as he please, the boy unlocks the animal's leg chain in hopes he will run away. Instead, Sahib imitates Walking Mountain and goes to work removing stumps. Run-Run's fears of the sacred elephant being discovered abate when the creature wallows in red mud, disguising his true color. The story's action is scarce, save for scenes in which White Mountain rescues Sahib from an attacking tiger; and, again mimicking the old elephant's actions, Sahib prevents another tiger from killing the prince. Half-tone illustrations open each chapter with a key scene. Though the novel offers a rewarding portrayal of friendship and loyalty, and a satisfying denouement, some Fleischman fans may find it slow-moving compared with his other works. Ages 8-11." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The master of the comic novel dazzles with this page-turner about Run Run, the elephant boy, and his encounter with Sahib, the bravest, smartest, most magnificent white elephant in all the land. Illustrations.

The cheapest crystal ball could have predicted that Sid Fleischman, the Newbery Award-winning author of The Whipping Boy, would someday write a biography of the hero of his youth-the immortal magician Harry Houdini.

As a teenage prestidigitator, Fleischman came to know the widowed Bess Houdini, who had retired to Southern California. In his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life, he describes her as "a kind of den mother to us young West Coast magicians." She gave him photographs that now appear in these pages.

Among Sid Fleischman's celebrated comic novels, published in nineteen countries, are The Giant Rat of Sumatra, Bandit's Moon, Disappearing Act, Bo &Mzzz Madand The 13th Floor: A Ghost Story. The father of three children (one of whom is Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman), he lives in Santa Monica, California.